OT: Why is Bush ransoming our troops?

[Samurai Jack]

“If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good” -Ezra Pound

You bring up an excellent point, wind draft. I often hear long-winded diatribes about how U.S. interests in Iraq begin and end in oil. Right now we are experiencing record gas prices, and I hear people all over whimpering about it. It's going to get much, much worse. Year after year oil is growing more and more scarce. Is our western civilization worth the effort of seizing foreign oil through acts of war? That's a tough question. Globally I say no. But as a member of a Western civilization who's life depends on that civilization, I say loudly "Save my a$$, Mr. President!"

Honestly I don't believe in taking the lives of innocents. I crave another answer. Until we are willing to seriously consider the question though, I fear we are left with the decisions of politicians who recognize the danger of running out of oil, as well as the FACT that Americans who don't see the writing on the wall will never support a war for the purpose of averting that disaster.

This coming from a self proclaimed Socialist. See what logical discussion can do to opinions?

[sanjuro_ronin]

As a former peacekeeper ( Bosnia) I can only say this:

War is and should always be, the VERY LAST resort and NEVER a step take lightly.

[Fu-Pow]

You bring up an excellent point, wind draft. I often hear long-winded diatribes about how U.S. interests in Iraq begin and end in oil. Right now we are experiencing record gas prices, and I hear people all over whimpering about it. It's going to get much, much worse. Year after year oil is growing more and more scarce. Is our western civilization worth the effort of seizing foreign oil through acts of war? That's a tough question. Globally I say no. But as a member of a Western civilization who's life depends on that civilization, I say loudly "Save my a$$, Mr. President!"

Honestly I don't believe in taking the lives of innocents. I crave another answer. Until we are willing to seriously consider the question though, I fear we are left with the decisions of politicians who recognize the danger of running out of oil, as well as the FACT that Americans who don't see the writing on the wall will never support a war for the purpose of averting that disaster.

This coming from a self proclaimed Socialist. See what logical discussion can do to opinions?

The funny thing about that is that you would think, OK we've invaded Iraq we have their oil, gas prices will go down. Nope, instead they've gone up and are rising and oil companies are posting record profits. Its just another instance of the Bush administration-industrial complex using war as a pretext to get away with raping us at the gas pump.

Look, if we had gone in to Iraq and wiped the guy out in one fell swoop ....great! Saddam Hussein was an awful person and had committed many crimes against humanity.

However, that just didn't happen. One country can't impose its will on another country and not expect them to fight back. Especially when there are major socio-cultural differences between those two nations.

If Bush was really there just to topple Saddam then he should have just had him assassinated. But that wasn't the point. The point was to install a western style democracy so that Iraq would trade their oil with the U.S.

This is more the Cheney neo-con agenda than the Bush agenda. Bush legitimately wanted to kill Saddam: there was a Vanity fair article where they interviewed Bush before he was elected the first time and he explicitly said then that he wanted to kill Saddam because Saddam had set up an assassination attempt on his father (that obviously was foiled.)

So what they should have done is just wiped out Saddam and left. What would have ultimately happened is another dictator would have taken power in Iraq (just look at the rest of the region.) Hopefully, that dictatorship would have been benevolent like the Saudi's but it would be no guarantee.

This what's ultimately going to happen anyways. We are going to leave. There will be a civil war and one side will win and establish a theocratic dictatorship of some sort. This is all the region can handle. We can't force them to go through this dramatic change, its just not going to hold. Maybe some of the people in the region are ready for it but I'd guess the majority are not.

And our reasons for it are based on capitalism rather than democracy (because those things tend to go hand in hand.)



FP

[jo]

As a former peacekeeper ( Bosnia) I can only say this:

War is and should always be, the VERY LAST resort and NEVER a step take lightly.

The soul-less ********s who started this war did it for THE CASH.

Have you ever looked at the billions it costs to run this war? KBR and Halliburton are awash is cash because of this clusterfu(k.

-jo

[jo]

However, that just didn't happen. One country can't impose its will on another country and not expect them to fight back. Especially when there are major socio-cultural differences between those two nations.
FP

The Iraqi people never wanted our form "democracy".

BushCo wanted to install Chalabi as thier puppet to control the country, they never intened to have any real democracy over there. Look, Hammas was democratically elected to power in Lebanon!!!

Saddam was a dirtbag, but he gave the people, especially women more freedom than most of the other Arab countries. And then, we came along and blew the whole country to bits, creating more terrorists and martyrs than Bin-Laden could dream of.

Bush should be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

-jo

[Fu-Pow]

The Iraqi people never wanted our form "democracy".

BushCo wanted to install Chalabi as thier puppet to control the country, they never intened to have any real democracy over there. Look, Hammas was democratically elected to power in Lebanon!!!

You can't insert a democracy in an area where there is a tribe mentality.

Saddam was a dirtbag, but he gave the people, especially women more freedom than most of the other Arab countries.

Saddam used nerve gas on the Kurds in Northern Iraq. His government tortured people. It was a tyrannical dictatorship on all accounts. However, it was "better" in the sense that he used a heavy hand to bring control over the tribal and religious factions in Iraq. His government was secular and somewhat progressive...but then again so were the Nazis.

And then, we came along and blew the whole country to bits, creating more terrorists and martyrs than Bin-Laden could dream of.

Like I said, if we'd just taken out Saddam, secured any WMDs (if they had ever existed) and left we'd all have been better off. But Bush went in and decided that he was going to do "nation building", something that he explicitly stated he would not do before he was elected in 2000.

I think largely Cheney is behind this whole scheme with his connections to the oil industry and military contractors.

Bush should be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
-jo

The way things are headed I'd say yes.

[sanjuro_ronin]

Before the War and Invasion of Iraq the middle east was a source of instability with Sadam and the Palestinian situation.
Now, we still have the Palestinian situation, we have more hatred towards the US, we have had an Israeli-Lebanon war/conflcit, we have a civil war in Iraq and Iran is now a nuclear power.

Much better eh?

[BruceSteveRoy]

sadaam may have been a huge douche and a human rights violator to the nth degree but he ruled with an iron fist which is what it seems is what it took to keep the region "stable"

perhaps the region was scared that he was crazy enough to do something so drastic that it wasn't worth stepping out of line while he was in power. now that he is gone each of the factions in the area is vying for power and trying to exert political, theological and military dominance. or so i gather. i welcome any correction to my interpretation of the situation.

the thing i think that we as a modern western nation fail to see is that from a political evolution stand point many middle eastern nations have not had a chance to politically evolve. they are still tribal areas, still ruled by warlords, religious leaders, etc. if you look at the political state of the world's largest powers they have at some point in there history been in this warring tribes stage of political development and it has through its own course evolved into modern political theories like democracy, socialism, communism, etc. what happens is that the more complex models of governments (which are the more powerful nations due to the fact that the complexity of their systems allows a way of resolving dispute without necessarily warring and conquering militarily. we tend to conquer financially instead.) attempt to go into these nation and expect their systems to operate within the same mechanisms as those of most major powers. This is going to cause conflict. however, in the end it could help to usher in a huge political change for the region. whether it is our right to do this is a moot point as it seems we are trying to whether we should or not. Rome did the same thing to the goths, the francs, the britons etc and in doing that helped to decrease the tribal governments and ushered in the next stage which ended up being theocracy until the renaissance and we know where it went from there to modern time. so were the romans wrong for doing it? it doesnt matter. what matters is they did it and now we are following suit. so america is modern roman empire? well if we are the next step is to outsource our military to mercenary nations in exchange for money and citizenship and then sit back until the nation collapses.

[Fu-Pow]

sadaam may have been a huge douche and a human rights violator to the nth degree but he ruled with an iron fist which is what it seems is what it took to keep the region "stable"

perhaps the region was scared that he was crazy enough to do something so drastic that it wasn't worth stepping out of line while he was in power. now that he is gone each of the factions in the area is vying for power and trying to exert political, theological and military dominance. or so i gather. i welcome any correction to my interpretation of the situation.

the thing i think that we as a modern western nation fail to see is that from a political evolution stand point many middle eastern nations have not had a chance to politically evolve. they are still tribal areas, still ruled by warlords, religious leaders, etc. if you look at the political state of the world's largest powers they have at some point in there history been in this warring tribes stage of political development and it has through its own course evolved into modern political theories like democracy, socialism, communism, etc. what happens is that the more complex models of governments (which are the more powerful nations due to the fact that the complexity of their systems allows a way of resolving dispute without necessarily warring and conquering militarily. we tend to conquer financially instead.) attempt to go into these nation and expect their systems to operate within the same mechanisms as those of most major powers. This is going to cause conflict. however, in the end it could help to usher in a huge political change for the region. whether it is our right to do this is a moot point as it seems we are trying to whether we should or not. Rome did the same thing to the goths, the francs, the britons etc and in doing that helped to decrease the tribal governments and ushered in the next stage which ended up being theocracy until the renaissance and we know where it went from there to modern time. so were the romans wrong for doing it? it doesnt matter. what matters is they did it and now we are following suit. so america is modern roman empire? well if we are the next step is to outsource our military to mercenary nations in exchange for money and citizenship and then sit back until the nation collapses.

You said it better than I ever could have. We're trying to usher the middle east through these steps unnaturally. On the other hand the situation is slightly different, these "tribes" have much more power to do destruction on a global level than ever before, chemical, biological, nuclear, etc. So we're dealing with a new beast but its underpinnings are ones we've seen before.

The key is that we can't force societies through these changes (especially not for our own financial benefit.) We can lend a hand here and there to change their fate but we can't "build" nations wholesale. They have to build themselves from the inside or they will collapse to a lower level of existence (survival, tribal, ethnic, etc.) That's what's happened in Iraq. We went from a secular dictatorship to a ethno-tribalistic civil war in the blink of an eye.

[wind draft]

I agree with what everyone is saying... But that is just part of the story.

All the facts mention above I agreed:

US Government went over to IRAQ for many reasons. Yes, Bush wanted to kill Sadam and that got done, all the reasons the government tell us for going to war is propaganda.

Just think if someone killed your family or tried to what would you do? Exactly....

Besides oil, we are in IRAQ for "our global interests" If you look, American soldiers have built bases in all these areas in IRAQ that is where OIL PIPE LINE runs. Why? To protect them. Same with A***hanisan. And That's why we gave that land to the JEWS, ISAREAL.

Back in the 40-50. American government was like okay this is Palestine land but since Germany killed so many JEWS, we are going to give this land to the Jews. That is messed up.. its like coming in to your house and say well this is our house now.

Yes... I don't agree with taking another life for GREED because essentially all this is just plain greed for money.

Well let see here... Religion is involve, so that's power and money.. and oil and land and even globalization instilling our hegemony idealogy onto other countries so they can be brainwash like many first world. Essentially our government and many first world want to globalize the world for it's capitalist and money making ideas.

But hey guess. I don't agree with a lot of our government do that's why I'm finishing my Bachelors at UW, going to law school, and become a lawyer were I can "actually" have a saying or a voice to influence society.

Dude without any of these are voice is like nothing.

[sanjuro_ronin]

Religion is always an excuse, never the reason.

[wind draft]

It's awsome hard to change a society where we are goin in there to take their natural resources.

You wouldn't like it if I came in your house and took all your valuable resources, even then after that you wouldn't listen to me to want to "help you"

[NJM]

Religion is always an excuse, never the reason.

Wise words.

[wind draft]

I should have been a little more clearer. I don't mean religion as being the reason. I agree its an excuse. But why did US Government took a piece of land from Palestine and gave it to the Jews? It's also a holy land regarded by three different groups of people? If you don't think the terrorist hate Americans for that reason then you are mistaken.

Holy land and that given away.. How is that not religion? I don't understand? Religion isn't the whole picture, but like I said before part of the picture. There isn't just one reason to whole dominance. But if I were in the shoes of leaders I would do the same thing so I can't really say much. Really it don't matter if you vote for democrat or republician; same thing will happen. Money rule the world= power. So it all come down to money and power.

[jo]

Religion is always an excuse, never the reason.

MONEY is always the reason. Religion is the best excuse there is.

-jo